Through the Sandbox initiative, the regulator has encouraged insurers to use technology to innovate and develop products/features. Could you elaborate on how you navigated these challenges, especially in the regulatory space, yet managing to add multiple product lines in a short period of time?ДЄt Digit, we identified quite early on that our customers are looking for simplified processes and we knew that leveraging tech was the only way to ensure that. Insurance is a tough business, especially when it comes to meeting regulatory requirements/compliance standards. In the first half of FY22, we recorded gross written premium of Rs 2,196 crores,as against Rs 1,312 crore in the first two-quarters of FY21, which was growth of 67%. We grew by 44% in FY21, notching a premium of Rs 3,243 crore, while the overall industry growth stood at about 5% last year. Our Covid-specific health product was a huge success. So, we pivoted to health as a category and focussed on enhancing our offerings under this segment.

Demand for motor insurance went down due to the state of the economy as well as a shortage of semiconductor chips. The pandemic hit demand for motor insurance and led to rising health insurance claims, which impacted loss ratios across the industry. How did you manage to stay afloat during the pandemic? The years 20 were tough for tech start-ups with many of them having to resort to massive pay/job cuts to weather the pandemic. This helped us turn profitable (on IFRS basis) within four years of operations. When it comes to fundraising, we have been growing at a healthy rate as a company and have a nationwide presence. In every round, our own employees have invested in the company.

All our other investors came by through connections in the industry, friends, and, in a few cases, additional efforts from our end. We have not appointed an investment banker for any of our fundraising rounds. The Toronto-based company has many investments in India and, therefore, has a good understanding of the industry. We were fortunate to have Fairfax back us from the very beginning and this was possible due to the association that our founder had with Prem Watsa, the founder and CEO of Fairfax. Most high-growth tech start-ups see funding events as a big milestone, and to many, private VC/PE capital is the only channel of capital to expand/grow their businesses. This was even before Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. One of our employees recognised that there could be huge demand for Covid-specific cover, and this helped us come up with IndiaвЂ™s first Covid product in March 2020 under the Sandbox Regulation. Another example is our Covid health product. For instance, for our flight delay cover, we evaluated two years of flight data to design an offering that truly favoured customers. The idea was to identify customer pain points before launching any new offering. We ensured that our objective of transparency and simplicity was embedded in all our processes. We were able to achieve this by leveraging technology, right from onboarding a customer to settling claims to renewing policies. We started Digit in 2017 with the intention of transforming the insurance landscape by tweaking the way traditional products like motor and fire insurance were designed and sold. At the time of our inception, only a handful of insurers had recognised tech as a key business driver.

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